The Église St-Pierre, Aulnay,
dates from the second half of the 1100s with the exception of the
later gothic spire and tower extension, and some rather clumsy
repair work on the (presumably collapsing) upper west facade.
The church is located outside the town of Aulnay between Poitiers
and Saintes
on the medieval pilgrims' road called the via
Turonensis. It sports a host of Romanesque people,
beasts and symbols in corbels, door and window decorations and
capitals. More in fact than we had time to do justice to on an
afternoon stop when the sun spent most of the time behind rain
clouds before the rain itself came. That being said there is
no excuse for the fact that we hardly took any photos of the many
corbels, and none of the capitals.

The south side of the church -
look's easy, but we were
chatting to the cows for nearly half an hour before the sun broke
through !

The central portal of the west
front includes the weathered remains of a Zodiac cycle (below) and a
couple of blind archivolt / tympanum structures, but the top half - including
probably some guy on a horse over the door in the manner of the
large Poitou churches - has been lost.

Pisces and
February foot warming ??

Bottom left of
outer archivolt - Aquarius (see the falling stream of water?) or two
faced Janus or ???

Aries, the Gemini
twins (just about still there), and ? doing ? from the remains of
the Zodiac cycle on the outer archivolt of the central west door portal.

The left arch,
with tympanum showing the upside down crucifixion of Peter.

Merman and friend
in the wall of the south portal chapel

Double headed
wyvern staking .....

An Aulnay chevet
head job -
reminiscent of the Cattedrali of Puglia like
Trani.

The nave capitals
include a dragon slaying scene and a group of elephants - both sadly
missed by our lazy cameras.